Red Dragon Character Guide

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This site has a review of the characters in the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon. Since the first season of the TV series Hannibal is set four years before Red Dragon, this blog may contain SPOILERS for that show.

RED DRAGON
R.J. Springfield is the Atlanta Chief of Detectives. He is described as being "a burly man in shirtsleeves". He is leading the investigation into the "Tooth Fairy" killing of the Leeds family. He holds a briefing with his detectives which Jack Crawford and Will Graham attend and speak at. He also meets them afterwards in his office. He asks Will about the capture of Hannibal Lecter, and notices the Will is uncomfortable,"Springfield was bluff, not stupid" so he changes the subject. He is impressed by the co-operation the FBI are offering and particularly impressed with Will Graham.

The next day when he is reading through reports of the investigators and when he spots Hoyt Lewis' report he immediately makes contact with Will Graham and asks him to meet up to further investigate this report.

* MORE TO COME *

"HANNIBAL" (Four years before)
It is unknown if R.J. Springfield will appear before Season 4.

Mr. Spurgen is the chief SWAT instructor at Quantico. He has a "wiry, compact body and his baseball cap tipped back on his head, he looked like an infielder" and he is "short and bandy-legged".

When the FBI decides to trap the "Fairy Tooth" killer by trying to provoke him into attacking Will Graham, Spurgen explains the precautions that the FBI have taken to ensure Graham will not be hurt, they have snipers placed at strategic locations, and they have reduced the wattage on the streetlights to make it harder if the "Fairy Tooth" killer tries to shoot Will from a distance. He advises Will on how to defend himself and asks Will to go to the firing range with him.

He trains Will on the range for two hours, and insists on checking the cylinder crane and cylinder
latch screws on Graham's .44 after they've finished firing. "He was
relieved to see that Graham did not carry the regulation .38, but he
worried about the flash from the ported barrel."

"HANNIBAL" (Four years before)
It is unknown if Mr. Spurgen will appear before Season 4.

RED DRAGON
Bob Greer is the alias Hannibal Lecter used when he was trying to obtain Will Graham's home address. He phoned Alan Bloom's office on a Saturday reasoning that his regular secretary wouldn't be there and he would be able to persuade the graduate assistant who was manning the phone to give him the address.

Lecter claimed to be Bob Greer from the Blaine and Edwards Publishing Company who Dr. Bloom had asked to send a copy of Winfred Overholser's The Psychiatrist and the Law to Will Graham. Lecter claimed that Dr. Bloom's regular secretary, Linda Hunt, was supposed to send on the address, but had forgotten to, and rather than get her in trouble could the graduate assistant give him Will Graham's address. To further persuade her, Lecter claimed he had "to catch Federal Express with it in about five minutes, and I hate to bother Dr. Bloom about it at home" and he said: "I'll dance at your wedding if you'll read it to me". He was successful in his ruse.

RED DRAGON
Francis Dolarhyde was born in 1938, his father, Michael Trevane, had left his mother, Marian Dolarhyde, before she gave birth to him. He was born at City Hospital, Springfield, Missouri with a cleft palate and was thus unable to feed in the normal way, but thanks to the intervention of maternity aide Prince Easter Mize he survived. A surgeon at City Hospital preformed an operation to close the clefts in his lip and decided, correctly, that repair of the infant's hard palate should wait until he was five. A local dentist created an obturator; which plugged the baby's palate and permitted him to feed without flooding his nose.
Marian abandoned the boy five days after his birth and he went to the Springfield Foundling Home for a year and a half and then to Morgan Lee Memorial Orphanage. He was not treated well at the orphanage and was there until he was five years old when his grandmother took custody of him.

His grandmother's motivations for adopting the boy were far from altruistic, she used the boy to harass and punish Marian, her daughter. Marian had married a lawyer, Howard Vogt, who was candidate for the state legislature, and her mother brought Francis to Marian's new husband's political rallies and explained who he was and where he came from.

Francis lived with his grandmother for several years, the first year he was there he wet the bed one night because he was afraid to go to the bathroom in the dark, and his grandmother threatened to castrate him with a sowing scissors if he ever did it again.

The cook of the household Queen Mother Bailey was very kind to Francis, and he found solace in her until he was eight years old. At that age he was playing "I'll show you mine, if you
show me yours" with a local girl, when a chicken that Queen Mother Bailey had just beheaded with an axe ran around the corner and covered the girl's legs in blood. Queen Mother Bailey calmly told Francis that he needed to do something more suitable for children and that he needed to keep his clothes on. When Francis' grandmother discussed the matter with him, and threatened to castrate him with the sowing scissors again, he assumed that Queen Mother Bailey told her and began to
distrust her.

This incident prompted Francis to get an axe and stand by his grandmother's bed to protect her from burglars, he love became so great for her than night. In an effort to be ready to use the axe, he beheaded a chicken that night, and a month later, he wrung another chicken's head off. Increasingly he had developed a form of stockholm syndrome with his grandmother.

His grandmother's health declined to such an extent that she had to be confined to a private nerve sanatorium, and Francis was taken by his mother to live with her and her new family. His was nine years old at this time. He had was given a room at the top of the servants' stairs, and introduced to his twelve year old stepbrother, Ned, and his stepsisters, Victoria and Margaret, who were thirteen nine years old. At the end of his first week living there Ned began to bully him and started by smashing his face into a mirror. After a month of living there, Francis was caught hanging Victoria's cat and was sent away.

In the coming years he continued a pattern of harming and killing pets, and at age seventeen he was caught entering the window of a woman's house for a purpose never established. He was given the choice of enlisting in the Army or facing criminal charges, and took the Army. After basic training he was sent to specialist school in darkroom operation and shipped to San Antonio, where he worked on medical-corps training films at Brooke Army Hospital.

Surgeons at Brooke took a professional interest in Francis and decided to operate on his face. They performed a Z-plasty on his nose, using ear cartilage to lengthen the columella, and repaired his lip with an Abbé flap procedure.

After his service was over, he reenlisted when he was 20 years old and was stationed at Seoul, Korea, developing film from the US Army spotter planes that flew over the thirty-eighth parallel in the late 1950's.

His grandmother was released from the sanatorium when he was 23 years old, and Francis asked for and received a hardship discharge two months before his scheduled separation date and went home to take care of her. He got a job at the Gateway Film Laboratory in St. Louis. Nine years later his grandmother died, and he saw his mother for the last time when she came to the funeral, and although she tried to phone him subsequently, he wouldn't answer her.

Francis worked out all the time and could have competed successfully in a regional body-building competition.

Nine years after his grandmother died when Francis was 40, a change occurred in him. He noticed aging in his hands and a week later he saw an image of William Blake's "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed [in] Sun". He became obsessed with the image, he carried the picture with him for days, photographed and enlarged it in the darkroom late at night. He posted the painting beside his mirror in the weight room and stared at it while he exercised. He went to Hong Kong for three months and had the dragon from the painting tattooed on his back, and got a set of dentures made that matches his grandmothers exactly. When he returned he began killing.

"HANNIBAL" (Four years before)
It is unknown if Francis Dolarhyde will appear before Season 4.

RED DRAGON
Queen Mother Bailey grew up in the service of the Dolarhyde family, and was the cook when Francis Dolarhyde was brought into the household. She was always kind to Francis, "She sometimes brought Francis a plum in her apron pocket, and she called him "Little Possum, always dreamin'" The kitchen was warm and safe" for Francis.

Her husband came to pick her up each night and they would give Francis a ride in their mule-drawn wagon down to the end of the lane, as long as he promised to walk straight back to the house. Francis enjoyed the company and closeness of those wagon rides.

The tenor of their relationship changed when Queen Mother Bailey caught Francis playing "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" with a local girl, although Queen Mother Bailey was kind to Francis, saying calmly: "Look here, boy, you want to see what's what, well now you see, so go on and find yourselves something else to do. Occupy yourself with children's doings and keep your clothes on", when Francis' grandmother discussed the matter with him, Francis assumed that Queen Mother Bailey told her and began to distrust her.

Soon after she found a couple of chickens that had been killed, but didn't suspect Francis was the killer.

Over a number of years Francis' grandmother began to develop dementia and began to act more domineering towards Queen Mother Bailey, micromanaging the preparation of meals, until one day she slapped Queen Mother Bailey on the face. This was the last straw, Queen Mother Bailey quit her job and contacted Francis' mother, Marian Dolarhyde, to take custody of Francis.

"HANNIBAL" (Four years before)
It is unknown if Queen Mother Bailey will appear in Hannibal.

RED DRAGON
When Francis
Dolarhyde goes to the Brooklyn Museum to see the William Blake painting "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed [in] Sun" he uses the alias "Paul Crane" to cover his tracks.

"Paul Crane" is also the name of the protagonist in the novel 1970 "Red Dragon" by Jerry Pournelle (writing as Wade Curtis) which Dolarhyde may have read.

RED DRAGON
When Francis
Dolarhyde goes to the Brooklyn Museum to see the William Blake painting "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed [in] Sun" he claims to museum staff member Paula Harper he wants to see it for research on a paper he is writing. He says it's "a paper on Butts" to which Paula replies "On William Butts?" which he nods to. She then says "I've never read much on him. You only see him in footnotes as a patron of Blake's".

It is worth noting that William Blake's patron was Thomas Butts, not William, and that it appears Paula Harper made a mistake with the name, but Dolarhyde knew she was incorrect (I'm assuming this because he didn't verbally agree with her, he just nodded) but didn't want to correct her because he needed to see the Blake painting as quickly as possible.

Dolarhyde's Story

About Me

I am a Computer Science Lecturer, Educational Researcher, and Futurist, in the School of Computing, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.
I care passionately about the portrayal of computers in the media, and have written several academic papers on this topic.
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